So after I got through the morning mess of kids, lunches, summer camp and the ‘net not working properly, I finally got to look at the news and see that Israel is invading southern Lebanon, again. WTF??? I have a whole folder of research notes on Israel invading Lebanon, twice, and I’m a historian – so why am I reading about it in today’s news???
So after a bit of a forage and some coffee, I have made some sense of this, at least in the superficial way that is about the best on can manage to make sense of the Middle East without going crazy.
It seems that Israel, in tearing apart Gaza over the kidnapping of Corporal Shalit, handed a ‘Start a war for Free’ card to every nutter in the region. The kidnapping wasn’t the real reason they tore up Gaza – they were, apparently, just looking for an excuse to finish off the Hamas-led government – but in taking the line that they would respond to any kidnapping of an Israeli soldier with massive overkill, they set themselves up. It can hardly be a surprise that some bunch of Hezbollah lads in South Lebanon, who may or may not have been acting independantly, grabbed a couple of Israelis. In the Middle East, if you erect a big button saying, “Don’t push this or you’ll start a war”, you can bet someone will push the button.
So now Israel is crawling all over south Leb – again – and blaming the Lebanese government, again, which is a tired old line. Just how much of a mess this will be remains to be seen.
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